


a brief history of music

by baroquemirrors



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, but with a gentle ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-17 10:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8140013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroquemirrors/pseuds/baroquemirrors
Summary: There is a change of acoustics, a subtle displacement of sound that presages some kind of shift in reality. The Machine goes silent and the world is no longer the same.(or; Root's life in relation to sound).references events from 3x01 through 5x10.





	

Root’s auditory perception has never been exactly typical. 

There’s the way the world is _supposed_ to sound, and then there’s the way Root hears it. 

The fall of civilization, for example, is supposed to be loud: bomb blasts, gunfire, crowds stampeding down the street. Trucks honking as freeways grow clogged with abandoned vehicles, riots breaking out to a soundtrack of shattered glass and car alarms. A noisy and violent and public kind of grief.

But when the world ends, it doesn’t sound like chaos. It sounds like the quiet and predictable hum of a server room, the whir of CPU fans, the soft tap of an 'enter' key. Samaritan comes online behind a sonic camouflage of cell phone data and satellite signals, and Root experiences the sounds of armageddon only in the aftermath— in the surreal, distorted nature of the hush that follows. 

There are many kinds of silence, but none is worse than the quiet that settles after somebody goes away. Absence leaves all different shapes in its wake, a collection of unique blanks and unpredictable  _something missing_ 's. When the Machine retreats, it leaves behind the loudest silence Root has ever heard. 

One minute the voice is in her ear, a steady stream of information flowing directly to her implant— and then, in the pause between syllables, it's gone. The silence that follows is as abrupt and concussive as a stun grenade, and it explodes in the backseat of the car with a force so intense it nearly shatters her eardrum. The resonance of the world condenses, erasing the screech of tires and the sounds of traffic until all Root can hear is own heartbeat, pounding so loudly she’s afraid it will deafen her.

Out of the corner of her eye she notices Shaw waving a hand in front of the rearview mirror. “Root- hey _,_ could you stop tuning me out for one damn second?” Sameen shakes her head, refocusing her eyes on the road in front of her. “What’s she saying to you, anyway?” 

Root takes a breath, still trying to clear her mind of the shell-shock silence.  “Nothing I didn’t already know."

Maybe endings are always like this: someone leaves, and the world is different than it was before. There is a change of acoustics, a subtle displacement of sound that presages some kind of shift in reality. The Machine goes silent and the world is no longer the same, and all Root can do is adjust to it with as much courage as she can muster.

She gets out of the car but it still doesn’t feel right, the way the end of civilization sounds nothing like disaster: a car honks at the nearest intersection, dog tags jangle as pets walk by with their owners, people talk on their cell phones without any care or concern for who, or _what,_  might be listening. 

All around her are the sounds of a city street where business continues as usual, but that isn't how Root hears it. Inside her head a hush is falling soft as snowflakes, the sound of too many departures happening simultaneously.

 

* * *

 

The aftermath reminds her uncomfortably of her time in the Stoneridge psychiatric facility; how quiet it was after the orderlies took her phone away, effectively separating Root from her only source of sanity. It was an extended stay in a sensory deprivation chamber. The rooms were white and textureless and muted, the patients were all too doped up to speak in anything louder than a whisper, and most days the only sound Root heard was the buzz of florescent lightbulbs lining the hallways. It was like living inside of a snow globe: a cold and insular space that reality couldn't penetrate.

These days Root can sense that same soporific numbness climbing up the walls of her consciousness. She feels like an unplugged amplifier; an audio tool gathering dust in a room with no music.

She gets used to spending restless nights in sleepless places: dozing in empty subway cars before sunrise and nodding off during stakeouts in stolen vehicles. She rents rooms in boarding houses and stays in crappy hotels in parts of Queens she’s never been to before. Every once in a while she moves money around accounts that don’t belong to her and books herself a night in a penthouse. 

But it doesn’t matter if she’s listening to the screech of train tracks or the absolute hush of a top-floor suite; everywhere Root goes there’s a pervasive silence she can’t shake.  She spends her nights sparring with it, wincing while its fists beat invisible bruises into her ribcage. 

When it becomes too much for her she dials Shaw’s number, and the relief she feels when Sameen actually answers is equal parts embarrassing and transformative.

"You better have a damn good reason for interrupting my night off, Root."

The way Sameen says her name—the throaty, exasperated intonation of it— makes Root flush with pleasure. "A double stack of your favorite chocolate chip pancakes? My treat.” 

”I could kill you right now," Shaw says flatly.

"Come on, don't be such a grump. You'll feel better after a good pre-mission meal." Root can hear the pause as Shaw considers this, weighing 'meal' and 'mission' against the prospect of having to sit in a diner booth together."Oh, did I forget to mention? We have a new number."

Twenty minutes later Sameen is dousing her plate in syrup while Root watches, smiling contentedly. Shaw can be lured almost anywhere on the promise of food and a chance for heroics.

Root knows she shouldn’t take advantage of that just to assuage her own loneliness, but lately she only seems to regain sensation when she’s around Sameen. Shaw doesn't care about the stun grenade Samaritan tossed at them, because she's trained to treat sound bombs like a minor inconvenience. She knows how to duck while the blast does it damage, and how to ignore the ringing her ears so she can spring back into action. She has a relentless energy and a propensity for mayhem that helps Root cope with the quiet.  Shaw is _loud_ , and Root is addicted to her particular brand of rowdy.

She starts tuning in on the comms even when they’re not working numbers together, butting in on the pretense of giving assistance.

"Not that way," she'll cut in, casually. “There are two Samaritan operatives waiting on the stairwell.” She has the building’s camera feeds pulled up on her laptop, and she smiles as Shaw stops in her tracks halfway down an empty corridor.

"What the hell, Root. Are you watching me?”

“I _may_ have hacked the office’s security feeds. You know, Sameen- you really should have disabled them before walking in there.”

“I can't believe you're spying on me now." Shaw looks around, finding the nearest camera and taking a step toward it so she can glare at Root properly. "You're worse than She is."

Root’s smile falters, just a little. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

It’s never long before Sameen finds herself in a shootout, and Root hangs around to listen to it. The bursts of gunfire and shattered glass get all wrapped up in the cadence of Shaw’s breathing, like a song created from the acoustics of disorder, and the melody is so unique and beautiful that it gives Root a rush of adrenaline. She enjoys being in Shaw's ear like this, the same way the Machine used to be in hers. The sounds remind her of what it feels like to have a connection that transcends the physical.

The Machine doesn’t speak anymore and Shaw is constantly giving Root the brush-off, but it's okay. Root is learning how to love things that weren’t built to show affection. Instead of searching for grand gestures, she finds pleasure in simple harmony: in the commingled sounds of the abstract and the corporeal, of the divine and the human.

And maybe there’s something to be gained through loss, after all-- maybe it’s like the rearranging of a symphony, putting the same notes in a different order to uncover a hidden tune. Shaw and the Machine aren’t anything new, but they sound different in the context of this quieter world. It takes Root a little while to get used to that, but once she does she finds it beautiful.

* * *

 

When the Machine finally speaks, it's like hitting play on a song that was paused in the middle: jarring at first, until Root remembers that this is the sound of her favorite chorus.

God's voice is collection of sampled vocals, conversations that have been archived and repeated in fragments. There’s a lovely metaphor in the borrowing of intonations to create a voice of divinity— but there’s something sad about it, too. It’s the _borrowing_ instead of _having_ that seems wrong; that the most unique being on earth should be denied Her own vocal identity.

Still, there’s no mistaking the sound of it. The Machine speaking, and Root lifts her gaze in reverence. “I can hear you.” 

There's no time to bask in it; the situation must be desperate, Root realizes, to goad the Machine into breaking silence. Simon is in trouble and Root has to save him, and there's a very good chance that this mission could prove fatal.

But despite the danger, Root leaves the hotel room with a sense of purpose more powerful than she's known in months. She moves into position precisely as the Machine instructs her too, feeling anchored by the heft of the gun in her grip. She pulls the trigger and all the sensation she's been craving comes rushing back to her: black-and-white returns to color, and the silence is so riddled with bullet holes that she's no longer afraid of it.

There is a poetry of motion that comes from the symbiosis of God Mode, and Root decides it must be the closest thing to true divinity a human being could ever experience. Every tendon in her body is stretched tight as a bow string; the blood pounds in her ears like a drum beat, making music where only she and God can hear it. She is both the instrument and the amplifier; she is dodging bullets and dancing across the floor, making a performance of the Machine's choreography. 

She's afraid to die; of course she is. Martine's bullet finds her shoulder, and the gun slips from her weakened grasp and clatters to the floor. Root's scared that it's all about to be over— that her number has finally come up. She always pictured herself dying alone, in the course of paid hit gone wrong or as a consequence of double-crossing too many private clients. She never expected to be _saving_ lives instead, or to have found people she loves so much that she's willing to die for them.  But most of all, she never expected this much music. And if this is the end, then at least Root isn't alone. Because, like always, God is with her.

 

* * *

 

Her perception of the world changes again on the day Shaw is taken.

Sameen gets shot, and the pain Root feels is visceral and immediate. There's a horrible scream echoing off the walls of the basement, and Root doesn't know that it's coming from her mouth until she realizes her lungs are empty. 

Her chest burns like it's blistering from the inside out— as if _she'_ s the one who got shot, instead of Shaw. The chambers of her heart are discharging ammunition and the bullets are ricocheting around inside of her, lining the pit of her stomach with their shell casings. 

She scrabbles her fingertips bloody against the cage of the lift, because Shaw is there, she's _right there_ , and Root could reach her if only Sameen hadn't been so fucking self-sacrificing and locked the door behind her. But the elevator is rising and walls are closing between them like a curtain falling on the final act of a play, and Root can’t stop it.  She can still hear the gunfire playing on repeat inside of her head. The elevator's ascent is a grating, metallic scream, and it's all too much sound without pattern; a rhythmless, discordant clamor that pushes her toward madness.

She lunges for the control panel, and suddenly everyone is shouting.

"Root-"

"Miss Groves!"

"Woah, hold it!" 

Lionel's arms wrap around her from behind. He pins her hands down so she can't punch the button, and she jerks and twists in his grip because _they don't have time for this_. Shaw is still down there, lying on the floor amid all the spent shells and the smoke, waiting for them to come back for her.

“Let go,” she gasps, struggling harder.

"Miss Groves— _Root_. Please." 

She sags in Fusco's grip, panting. She doesn't know which is worse— being the person who gets left behind, or being the one does the leaving. It amounts to the same thing, really. The scream feels stuck in her throat, and her lungs are empty, and there's this space in the elevator next to her where Shaw should be standing but _isn't_. 

Root's own words come back to her, echoed off the wall of the past: _how badly did you have to break it, to make it care about people so much?_ Losing the Machine's voice left her numb; losing Shaw is physical agony.

"I'm going back for her.”

“No.” It's John who says it. He’s leaning unsteadily against Finch with his eyes half-closed, and even that one word seemed to cost him a great deal of energy. "Not by yourself."

The elevator is slowing down. They're at ground level now, and Root has to make a decision. She can’t hear the gunshots anymore— just silence, like that of an oncoming storm, angry with electric potential. Root wants thunder. She wants wreckage. She wants to set Samaritan’s operatives on fire, right before she drowns them.

But most of all she wants noise _,_ something to equal the howl she feels rising up inside of her.  Because when everything else gets taken away, all Root's left with is sound. Her head is filled with eruptions from the extremes of the auditory spectrum: sometimes shouting, sometimes silence.

What  she really wants is somewhere in the middle: sound that comes in at a steady volume and then remains constant. Sound that's dependable. Sound that _stays_.

 

* * *

 

What saves her, in the end, is a noise so inconsequential she herself almost overlooked it: electromagnetic pulses transmitted over a radio frequency, little  _blips_  that she sends out like a message in a bottle.  Miraculously, it works.

Other, similarly delicate sounds follow: the dual gasp of impact that happens when Shaw tackles her, and the crunch of dry leaves being crushed beneath their bodies. The soft intake of breath that accompanies Root’s wide-eyed stare of recognition. Shaw’s voice, tremulous and fearful, and the click of the safety re-engaging as she relents from her death threat and lowers her weapon. 

The synchronized rhythm of their footsteps as they walk out of the park, together.

Shaw doesn’t speak much in the days that follow, but Root doesn’t need her to; her ears are already full of all the notes that have been missing, the measures and bars that complete the harmony. 

“If we’re just information,” Root tells her, “just noise in the system- we might as well be a symphony.”

Because she wants Shaw to know that love doesn’t have to be a feeling. It can be something else entirely— a sensation, or a sound. Someone's voice becomes the harbor you think of when you're riding through the storm, and the memory of them gives you a reason to keep going. 

And if she ever leaves, that's how Root wants to be remembered: not as a loss, but a remainder. A tune that plays on as long as someone wants to listen; a compendium of sound, transitioning with grace into each new phase of reality.

She smiles at Shaw, and Shaw smiles back. With their weapons drawn and the Machine in Root's ear, they stand up and begin to make music.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically my love letter to Root. I got into POI late and I have a lot of feelings and I'm not ready to let go, so I guess this is part of my grieving process. Thanks for reading <3


End file.
